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And The Lists of Things

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Hello, hello to all of the Lists enthusiasts. Since this one was created in response to President Barack Obama’s Favorites List, I will do my best to keep it classy, but short and sweet. But then again, as a linguist, I have to remind you that the word “sweet” has a plethora of meanings, so pick one that fits the context. So it’s my picks for Top 10 in FICTION (Books) (Sorry, it’s all absolute classics.) Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer / Adventures of Huckleberry Finn F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Short Stories of, Matthew J. Broccoli Edition Ernest Hemingway, The Complete Short Stories of, The Finca Vigia Edition Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle Don Delillo, Underworld Virginia Wolf, To The Lighthouse Tony Morrison, Beloved Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre Jorge Luis Borges, Collected Fictions, translated by Andrew Hurley Anton Chekhov, The Greatest Short Stories of, translated by Constance Garnett My picks of Top 10 in FILM (Movies) The GodFather (1972 & 1974) Some Like It Hot (1959) T...
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Emma Kohlmann: Zines, Watercolors and the Sexuality of Figurative Art

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  Greetings, art lovers, salutations, admirers of versatility… You ever wondered what a zine is? It sure wonders about you. “Zines are a powerful medium for self-expression, representing thriving subcultures and independent publishing driven by creativity and individuality. Zine-making is a labor of love, often produced by individuals or small groups—known as ‘zinesters’—reflecting passions and perspectives ”… Having learned the word, I’d like to talk about one of the subculture’s most outstanding representatives. A versatile and talented Emma Kohlmann, an artist who’s done it all, and is currently focused on creating with ink and watercolors. Her art was called “a contemporary feminine mythology”,    delicate emotions expressed through ink washes and watercolors. Subjects of study? Plants, butterflies, and birds, alongside enigmatic faces and figures.  Residing and working from the state of Massachusetts, Kohlmann grew up in the Bronx, New York. She was a creative c...
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From My Archives: Jean -Michel Basquiat. Rise to Fame, Keith Haring , Madonna, and Warhol.

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  “I was trying to communicate an idea; I was trying to paint a very urban landscape. I was trying to make paintings different from the paintings that I saw a lot of at the time, which were mostly minimal, and they were highbrow and alienating, and I wanted to make very direct paintings that most people would feel the emotion behind when they saw them.”- Jean-Michel Basquiat Basquiat showed an inclination for drawing & painting at a very early age, presumably, owing to his mother, who always encouraged him to create art. They visited many New York art exhibitions and by the age of six, Jean Michel had already become a Junior Member of the Brooklyn Museum. After his parents’ divorce, he lived briefly with his father (his mother suffered from mental disorder and was unable to care for him). Eventually, Jean Michel ran away from home, was adopted by his friend's family, spray-painted buildings in Lower Manhattan under the nom de plume SAMO, tried attending various schools in New Y...
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Contemporary art: Surrealism, Updated.

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Greetings, art lovers, salutations, surrealism admirers. Remember Salvador Dali? He remembers you too.  A true master of his craft, he once admitted that Surrealism was a destructive force, of which he was in complete and total control, unleashing its power to rid of the shackles, limiting the vision of his art viewers. It could be so.  There were others that saw the movement as a reawakening of the poetic idea in art, the reintroduction of the subject, in a very particular sense, that of the strange and illogical.  To me, as an eccentric, Surrealism has always been a view of the world. In others. And only recently that I began thinking of it as a resolution of two states: dream and reality. More than contradictory. “…into a kind of absolute reality, a surreality, if one may so speak.”- Andre Breton once said. For J.L.King, a young, talented, San Francisco-born artist, Surrealism is one of the means of intelligent provocation in people around: the questions, the never end...
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